NMM Maps: CATEGORIES – Definitions and Indicators November 2013
NMM Maps: CATEGORIES – Definitions and Indicators ''' November 2013 This is the updated list of the categories to be used for the online mapping, that has developed over two years of debate in a series of meetings: Marathon 2008, Agva 2009, Zürich 2010, Berlin 2011, Tepoztlàn 2011, Athens 2012 and Kloogaranna 2012. The aim of this list is not to start new maps from the beginning. It is rather a way to update and rethink the work that has already been done. So you will not need to change everything, but to organise the existing information and add missing parts as far as you think it is meaningful and relevant for your city. This is an extended list that intends to serve as a tool to collect and organise information. A revised list might be used for the book depending on a) the focus we want to have on the printed maps, b) a clear graphic representation. Attempts will have to be made to find a graphic way to use all categories in the book. In the following pages you will find the new mapping categories organised in '''five thematic layers, with a short description. In each description there are also proposed indicators '''on how to reach/access/formulate the required knowledge. '''Layer text: Each layer needs a short introductory text describing general trends and processes that cannot be mapped. Item texts: Texts that will come out in pop up boxes at particular points on the online map and will have information about the project or location (description, facts, processes, deals, impacts...). Please add also useful links. Graphic representation of categories on maps: Surface: '''a polygon filled in with a colour (or hachures): circumscribes the area where a project, development or process is taking place. '''Boundary: a polygon that is not filled; used to demarcate a region (e.g. metropolitan region). Line: '''a line on the map (does not form a polygon, used for strategic infrastructural projects) '''Icon: a graphic symbol that represents objects (buildings, projects; e.g. flagship project). Stamp: the stamp is a graphic icon that is ‘stamped’ over an already mapped item representing a physical object or a process. It gives additional information and describes processes (deals, strategies, policies and effects) that we wish to make visible on the map (e.g. evictions related to a specific urban regeneration project). Patterns: patterns might be used to represent differentiated intensity or quality of mapped processes or differentiated spatial concentration of a process within an area. A pattern has to be added later, because it is technically not possible to use it in the current mapping environment. The range of representations on the online map is limited on surface, boundary, line, and icon. '''On the printed maps we will have much more possibilities (including hachures, stamps, etc.). The list of graphic representations of the online-map is shown in the file 2-2013_NMM_Maps.pdf '''LAYER 1 : City description and contextual information 1991 ' ' Text for this layer: Information as supporting texts or pop-up windows that will help us understand the changes that occurred in the course of the last 20 years while also highlighting the contextual specificities of each city, i.e. planning politics and informality. It can include information on the history of urban development of each city, which highlight important contextual specificities (e.g. social housing in former GDR or informal housing in other countries) and which are still decisive for the city’s development. Information on governance structures and urban planning mechanisms (public, private, mixed urban planning, etc.) is also helpful to understand current processes. Try to give information/data on wealth and income distribution in your city. Show wealth gap / inequality distribution in cities. It is up to the city teams to decide on the indicators to be used (because not every city has the same data bases, i.e. income / wealth data distribution / real estate and rent values, etc). Suggestion: mix quantitative (statistical data) and qualitative means of representing wealth by adding information in the text about the ‘perception’ of extremes (wealth and poverty) over a statistical map. ' ' (1)' Urban region '(boundary) today The boundary of the metropolitan area. Map at least two boundaries, in order to show that no single boundary can capture everything, as they depend on diverging perspectives, political agendas etc. The urban region has to be mapped on the online map, but is also represented and clarified in an extra map (see guidelines part II). (2)' / (3)' Central areas '(surface) today and '''Subcentres '(surface) today Parts of the city with high concentration of offices, shops, governmental institutions, as well as cultural or touristic venues. In large cities there may be several / many of these areas, in smaller cities perhaps only one or two. We suggest you concentrate on the most important ones (between one and perhaps 10 or so), in order to give some kind of structure to the map. Please differentiate between main central areas (1) and subcentres (2). Indicators: presence of governmental, cultural and business institutions (power). '''(4)' / (5) Wealthy and Poor areas (extremes)' (surface) Indicative indicators that could be used if easily accessible and considered significant for each context: 1. data: on income, wealth, unemployment, land and real estate values, segregation, etc; 2. observation on the ground: urban typology like urban villas or condominiums, luxury functions like exclusive shops, services / urban typology typical of social housing or informal building inhabited by poor people.' '''If detailed data is available, you could also use an '''extra map' to show wealth inequality. (6)' Informal urbanization '(surface) Urbanization outside the formal regulated masterplanning (e.g. slum, shanty-town or unregulated private urbanisations). Although a variety of different processes of informal urbanization exist in different historical and geographical contexts, it is often typified by illegal occupation of land, setting up of makeshift constructions and lack of basic public utilities like water supply, sewage, electricity etc. Informal urbanization usually takes place where large sections of the people are excluded from the mainstream economy and find neither work nor shelter, but it is also practiced by the elites operating in ‘special tolerated regimes’. Informal urban processes lie on the borderline between legal and illegal; legitimate and illegitimate; authorized and unauthorized. This border is arbitrary and ever-shifting and is a site of power relations, state power and sometimes violence. Indicative indicators: 1. Data: about being outside the building regulations, urban plans or planning laws (lack of planning permission,); 2. observations on the ground: bad building conditions like risk of flooding, pollution, landslide, proximity to hazardous site, lack of public infrastructure, services, facilities, self-building). LAYER 2: Strategies and Projects of the NMM This layer intends to describe and trace the processes that are streamlining our cities as well as the hegemonic discourses affecting urban development in recent years. This discourse consists of both a ‘bright’ /glossy imaginary about flagship projects, reinvention of city centres, urban developments, commodification, financialisation, cultural entrepreneurial clusters, creative classes etc., but also a ‘dark side’ (which is mainly an economic doctrine) about the need to privatise public sector and public assets, the shrinking of the welfare state and zero tolerance policies. Text for this layer: Describe (and map) city marketing strategies and policies (narratives, image production, city branding) intending to ‘place the city on the world map’ and attract investments and qualified labour. These include urban development projects, flagship projects, big transport infrastructure (high speed trains, airports, exclusive toll highways etc.) and other prestige projects, as well as significant events and festivals. Refer to the impact of these policies and projects on cities and local society, for example the effects of changing local administration budgets in favour of NMM projects, changes in regulation, etc. If relevant mention possible positive side effects. (7)' New strategic urban infrastructure projects '(coloured line) This category refers to large infrastructure projects, which aim to increase the strategic and competitive role of a metropolitan area. However, many large infrastructure projects were already planned in earlier decades representing grand plans for urban modernization. Therefore, we are only mapping here those large and strategic infrastructures, which were realized recently (last 10 years) or are under construction now and gained strategic importance for image related development of NMM, too. For instance, some infrastructure buildings gain flagship project status (see category Flagship project). Strategic urban infrastructure projects can be mapped either as line (highway, rails) or as boundary line for a larger area. '' '' ' (8)' Flagship projects (icon) Flagship projects that are typical for the new metropolitan mainstream, like important museums, stadiums, convention centres, urban entertainment centres, important skyscrapers, etc. We suggest to focus on realized flagship projects of the past 20 years. (9)' Failed / not realised flagship projects' (icon) It’s not always easy to decide whether a project has already failed or not. It may still be contested with an uncertain outcome. You decide what to include in this category. Typical examples are once-planned opera houses, museums, motorway sections, tunnels and bridges, which have not been built or massively delayed with uncertain prospects. (10)' Trendy neighbourhoods' (surface) These are areas that are in an early stage of change, before gentrification has become dominant. Often they had been working class neighbourhoods. Cheap rents have been attracting migrants, students and artists, which build up their own economy and venues. “Ethnic” restaurants, bars, (subcultural) clubs show a new face of the former working class sociocultural infrastructures. Trendy neighbourhoods can be in different stages, from the first pioneers until major re-investment. The neighbourhoods get arty, galleries add to off-spaces, music clubs get well known and attract people from the region. The neighbourhood becomes trendy and partly starts to be mainstream. But there are several scenes found in parallel and different spots (subcultural and mainstream) existing at the same time. Often you find also cultural-political avant-gardes in these areas. (11)' Areas of (re)investment '(surface) Processes and projects of reinvestment (private, state led, and/or PPP, usually in previously disinvested or low income areas), such as intense neighbourhood upgrading or speculative urban regeneration processes (including gentrification), having negative effects on actual inhabitants and users of the area because of rent and real estate values increase, leading to displacement and exclusion of low income and vulnerable groups. Indicative indicators: urban plans and urban development projects that are proposing or have proposed (and have been built already) new functions like luxury and glittering houses, villas, condominiums, shops, shopping malls, offices, headquarters, elite cultural institutions or private museums and art galleries. And more generally all that is meant to foster urban competition and extract urban rent and profit. The negative effects in terms of dispossession and eviction will be shown in layer 3. (12)' Image related developments' (surface) Urban developments that are mainly related to the production of a metropolitan image, e.g. projects for the construction of a new skyline or a shiny waterfront, as well as big events such as Olympics. Events are mapped when related to spatial developments. The distinction between areas of (re-)investment (11) and image related developments (12) is sometimes difficult. (13)' Historical (re-)construction' (surface) Conservation, reconstruction and/or new construction of ‘historical’ facades and ensembles to promote a specific historical and often ideological identity of the city. This reconstructed and functionalized history has often little to do with social and political memories and does not correspond to collective knowledge; it is oversimplified, reassuring and controlled. It erases both the contemporary everyday life and the relation to the historical life that produced this place. It tries to install a new ‘collective memory’ and is one of the NMM-strategies to sell the city. ' (14)' Places and areas of privatization (surface) The process of privatizing a place or area that was public or common. For example the privatization of buildings and land owned by the state or public bodies; the privatisation of public agencies (that offer and manage public services) so that even their assets (especially land) become private; green areas meant to be parks become areas for private speculative developments; old villages that are turned into hotels (spread hotel) and prevent the accessibility by ordinary people; big private golf courses that don’t allow the accessibility to the land by ordinary people; private management of public heritage with the main goal to generate profits instead of performing a public cultural program, etc. LAYER 3 : Spaces of Injustice The aim of this layer is to map the parallel social processes related, directly or conditionally, with the implementation of the NMM in cities. It is an attempt to record the ‘dark side of the moon’ from a critical perspective, what has been called the collateral damage (‘necessary’ and/or ‘unavoidable’ according to the cynicism of the neoliberal doctrine) of modernisation and development processes or as stated in point 8 of the INURA declaration: “resisting the damaging effects of globalisation”. Text for this layer: Description what is happening on the societal level as a result of the prioritisation of NMM policies: social and welfare policies that are neglected or cut, increase of poverty, intensification of inequality, widening of the income gap, tensions in power and gender relations, rising authoritarianism and restriction of rights, migration issues, ... (15)' Downgraded and deprived areas '(surface) Areas of disinvestment with little or no maintenance, extreme phenomena of exclusion, marginalisation, unemployment, lack of income etc. Neighbourhoods with high concentration of vulnerable groups, such as migrants, Roma and others, “quartiers sensibles” etc. Indicators: 1. Data: on income, unemployment, land value; 2. observation on the ground: deteriorated buildings, lack of services, lack of cultural and art centres, lack of public spaces, lack of maintenance of common areas, … (16)' Processes of displacement '(icon) Involuntary movement of population by conversion of their homes to other uses or by the rise of land values. Indicators: areas that have been gentrified over the years and their socio-economic profile has changed, urban plans and projects that have been implemented and that substitute the previous existing built areas (with its inhabitants and social or economic uses and functions) with new functions and buildings; this needs knowledge about the social history of the city, how it changes in the past 20 years. (17)' Evictions '(icon) The expulsion of tenants by legal processes or force. Very often privatisation of social housing is accompanied by mass evictions of families; evictions of population installed in previously empty of abandoned areas (fringes, brown fields, urban periphery, etc.) where new development plans are taking place; evictions because of unpaid mortgages. Indicators: data on evictions, articles in the press, solidarity movements. (18)' Spaces of repression and control '(icon) Control in the form of policing, camera surveillance, ever-tighter regulation through codes and ordinances, etc. is pervasive in contemporary cities. Repression is often carried out by private security agencies, which complement or even replace official police. Acknowledging this new urban paradigm of securitisation, we need to map here only those spaces, which are exemplary for an extreme form of control and repression. Examples where a politics of fear dominates the urban could include: detention centres for migrants, areas ruled by (para-) militarization, aggressive removal of various social, ethnical and professional groups from prime spaces… (19)' Gated Communities and exclusionary zones '(boundary) Public and private spaces with restricted or controlled access and/or private security. New urban developments, privatised areas, flagship projects impose often – explicitly or implicitly – an exclusionary regime (sometimes also based on racial or other forms of discrimination). Apart from delimited gated communities, the limits of such spaces are often not clear. Sometimes the border of the area from which the majority is excluded can be mapped, otherwise exclusionary regimes can be indicated by a stamp. Spaces of corruption and abuse '''(can be addressed in the texts or shown in an extra map) Quite similar to what was described as “deals” in the case study guidelines. Projects, plans or public works heavily affected by corruption. Strategic plans designed by the ruling groups outside and beyond urban planning legislation. Speculative legal (or almost illegal) buildings and illegal elite villas. Indicators: 1. judicial inquiries on development plans and projects because of bribery and corruption; judicial inquiries on cooked bids or competitions for public contracts to build public works; newspapers inquiry and campaign about corruption in land issues; 2. protests by community groups and people's committees against specific plans or projects because they insist that there was an abuse against their rights (could be an alleged illegality or something that is perceived as unjust and unfair even if it is not against the law and the legal order), very often in these cases the people's groups produce studies about the contrast between the contested specific plan or urban project and the urban / metropolitan plan or planning law in force. 'New spaces of extreme exploitation of labour '(can be addressed in the texts or shown in an extra map) Private services using flexible and very low paid work (including knowledge work). Flexicurity dogma and precarious working conditions (not very easy to map since it is dispersed and involves almost all urban labour nowadays). Special production zones (legal or illegal) like sweatshops, maquillas, agriculture and other, without workers rights. Subcontracting practices by public services or private companies (e.g. cleaning companies in public services). Construction projects violating security measures and working rights (e.g. Olympic construction camps). Indicators: fights by the workers' about their condition of work; trade union data; judicial inquiries about violation of law on workers rights; contracting out services by the public administration (choosing the lowest price), downgrading in this way the workers' condition; areas with many old people carers (mainly migrant women) census data, data by migrant associations and women's associations; house servants (mainly in very rich areas), census data. 'Environmental degradation '(can be addressed in the texts or shown in an extra map) Intends to show the effects, direct or indirect, of NMM projects or other investments, endangering or deteriorating living conditions of neighbourhoods, deprived or poor areas creating conditions of environmental injustice. Indicators: incinerators, garbage dumps; change in use of designated urban green areas; fragmentation produced by infrastructure like highways; air pollution and noise produced by highways and airport; huge building site to built infrastructures like the high speed lines that shake violently the whole territory, with the risk to dry groundwater, subvert the ecosystem and to undermine the stability of buildings. '''LAYER 4: Geographies of the Crisis This layer is attempting to show the spatial effects of the crisis (after 2007…). It is also a layer where the time dimension is very important. It ‘sits’ over the previous ones and sees what has happened to older projects/ processes (failed, change in objectives, intensification of privatization and inequality processes). It will map processes that are happening in the name of the crisis: ‘crisis’ as an opportunity to accelerate processes of neoliberalisation (deregulation) and shrinking/privatisation of public sector (privatisation of public services, «fast track» frameworks for investment procedures, violation of existing regulations and rights etc. Text for this layer: '''Give estimation on how your city has been affected by the current global financial economic crisis (or on the contrary: how it experienced an economic boom…). Describe the transformations and new realities emerging within the crisis. Try also to show new emerging forms of informality or transformations in informal urbanisation processes. '(20)' Inequality intensification (surface) Try to show intensification of wealth, new areas of poverty or new types of poverty. '''(21)' Failed investments' because of the crisis (icon) Flagships projects or image related developments that were abandoned because of the crisis or neighbourhood upgrading processes that were stopped. (22)' New spaces of privatisation' (icon) Privatisation of public assets, urban spaces, common resources and changes in regulatory framework in order to accelerate the process. (23)' Crisis related displacement and evictions' (icon) Areas with extended phenomena of foreclosures and seizures. Evictions because of privatisation of public housing. (24)' Reinforced control in the name of the crisis' (icon) Policing, control, repression and exclusion. Additional processes and strategies ' Find other processes, policies, strategies and phenomena that are generated by the current crisis. ' ' ' ''' '''LAYER 5: Possible Urban Worlds Spaces and projects produced by city inhabitants / social movements showing a different perspective for urban development, fighting against the dominant model of NMM that promotes competitiveness, entrepreneurial strategies and policies. These projects engage in the just redistribution and access for all, cooperative models, solidarity, right to the city, ecology, freedom, creativity, concrete utopias, liberating the urban imagination, … Characteristics of alternatives are often: self-management, confidence and trust in each other, accessibility without discrimination based on race, sex, gender, age, income..., ability to offer a place that allows you to be yourself, creativity, freedom, happiness, solidarity without fear. Text of this layer: ''' What have been the major resistances and social mobilisations in your city in the last 20 years? What kind of urban movements have emerged, around what major issues? How have these movements transformed along the years? What types of alternatives have been developed (trying also to contextualise the meaning and content of ‘alternative’). '(25)' Resistance / Contested spaces (icon) Fights for rights, spaces, access to... (including environmental dimensions). Contested spaces, contested projects, contested infrastructures and facilities (as the fight against the high speed train line in Val di Susa or in Florence). Conflicts about identities of places. Victories and examples when NMM projects failed because of the movement against it. '''(26)' Building alternatives '(icon) Developing alternatives in everyday life, housing, collective spaces, culture, art, housework / reproduction work / care (gender role). Self organised spaces, cooperatives, collective urbanization (social and cultural infrastructure). Spaces of happiness and pleasure. Appropriation of public spaces, housing, social centres, art and culture workshops... Neighbourhood regeneration by local governments with positive effects for local society (e.g. Medellin).